1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a camera with a line-of-sight detecting device incorporating a function to detect a subject serving as a photographing target by detecting a line of sight of the photographer.
2. Related Background Art
According to a typical conventional method of determining a subject serving as a photographing target, an object in the vicinity of the center within a finder is determined as the photographing target. The practice is to detect a distance to this photographing target or detect a brightness thereof.
According to this method, however, free framing is hard to perform. Therefore, a method has been developed in recent years, wherein the photographing target is determined from a line-of-sight direction by detecting a line of sight of the photographer. A known camera utilizing this method is disclosed in, e.g., Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open No. 1-241511.
This camera is constructed to detect the line of sight by illuminating an eyeball of the photographer with infrared light and detecting the reflected light therefrom.
This method, however, presents the following problem. If an eye of the photographer is unobstructed, e.g., by glasses, and is moved to a position close enough for a detector to receive sufficient reflected light from the eyeball, the line of sight can be detected. If the photographer wears eyeglasses, or if the position of the eyeball is spaced apart from the finder, the amount of reflected light from the eyeball is too small, resulting in a drop of precision in detecting the line of sight.